July 26-28, 2018
Jul 26 02:30 Sen. Housley urges delisting of timber wolves Jul 26 08:55 Putin hates Trump's trade deal Jul 26 14:15 Jeff Erdmann vs. Angie Craig, 2016 campaign edition Jul 26 14:45 Three cheers for the Ninth Circus Jul 27 00:19 Gov. Pawlenty criticizes Tim Walz on tax increases Jul 27 17:26 The Democrats' open borders crisis Jul 28 01:54 The origins of the Trump economy Jul 28 12:06 Dershowitz's powerful what if Jul 28 16:00 Gov. Dayton, Tim Walz & Wrong Way Feldman
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Sen. Housley urges delisting of timber wolves
Sen. Karin Housley issued this statement urging Congress to "delist the gray wolf as an endangered species." In the statement, Sen. Housley states "I am pleased the U.S. House of Representatives included an amendment in one of its recently-passed spending bills to bypass the courts and delist the gray wolf as an endangered species. By nearly every metric, the gray wolf's recovery goals have been exceeded and this language would return management responsibility where it belongs: with the states. Farmers and landowners are prevented from protecting their livestock against wolf attacks because of this burdensome regulation. Instead of siding with far-left environmentalists, Tina Smith should put her brand of radical, left-wing partisanship aside and support this effort in the U.S. Senate."
By all objective measures, the timber wolf, aka the grey wolf, is no longer an endangered species. Further, it shouldn't be listed as a threatened species, either. According to this government definition , the definitions of an endangered species and a threatened species are spelled out in simple, easy-to-understand wording. An endangered species "are at the brink of extinction now." Meanwhile, threatened "species are likely to be at the brink in the near future." This is important information, too:
Threatened status benefits species and people in two situations: (1) it provides Federal protection before a species reaches the brink of extinction; and (2) in the case of species that were initially listed as endangered, threatened status also allows scaling back Federal protection as they recover and no longer need the maximum protections of the Act.
State natural resource management agencies designated by the Service may "take" (kill, wound, trap, or move as defined by the Act) individuals of a threatened species in pursuit of conservation programs for the species. In contrast, those agencies are prohibited from "taking" an endangered species if the action might kill or permanently disable the specimen, move it to another state, move it beyond its historical range, or keep it in captivity for longer than 45 days.
The environmental activists to which Sen. Housley refers have argued, literally, that species that've been put on the endangered species list are forever at risk of extinction. In their mind, the ESA, aka Endangered Species Act, should protect endangered and threatened species alike with equal ferocity.
The thing about environmental activists is that they're never willing to accept the fact that the ESA worked. If they did, they'd be much less rabid and much more moderate and tolerable.
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2018 2:30 AM
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Putin hates Trump's trade deal
If anyone wondered whether President Trump would stick the proverbial shiv into Comrade Putin's vitals, those doubts should disappear immediately. That isn't granting absolution for his terrible performance at the press conference heard round the world. It's now possible to think that President Trump missed an opportunity at that press conference and that he just hurt Russia, aka Putin, badly.
Thanks to the preliminary trade agreement President Trump made with the EU, the Kremlin will have far fewer rubles to count in the near future. Everyone knows that what little strength the Russian economy has comes from the exporting of their energy resources, especially to eastern European nations.
The trade deal that President Trump just negotiated with the EU includes expanded trade of liquefied natural gas along with other energy products. Does anyone think that Putin is sitting in his Kremlin office thinking about how grateful he is to President Trump? That's right. He isn't thinking that whatsoever. He's seeing red -- and not the red usually associated with the Soviet Union.
It's now time for President Trump's critic -- and they are legion -- to admit that he's got the economy growing while the economic storm clouds disappear from sight. The doom and gloom predicted by MSNBC, CNN, the NY Times and other parts of the Democrats' messaging apparatus won't happen anytime soon. Happy days are here again.
When President Trump held this press conference, he didn't just deflate Putin:
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That being said, when European Union chief Jean-Claude Juncker said "This is also a message to others", everyone immediately knew he might as well have been talking directly at Putin. This point can't be overemphasized.
The other people whose crest has fallen since the agreement was reached are the Democrats. Thanks to yesterday's agreement in principle, there won't be a recession (or even a slowdown) right before the election. Further, the Democrats have started questioning whether people are feeling like the recovery is real. The blue collar workers building pipelines think it's real. The people opening up new LNG wells think the Trump recovery is real. Everywhere you look, people are thanking President Trump for putting in place the policies that've caused their 401(k)s to grow and their benefits to improve.
This was a silly question from the start. If people thought that the Trump recovery wasn't real, why is consumer confidence sky-high? Now, thanks to this agreement, farmers will get the relief they need.
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2018 8:55 AM
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Jeff Erdmann vs. Angie Craig, 2016 campaign edition
Earlier this week, I published this post with a photoshopped picture of Angie Craig saying something embarrassing. A quick Google search verified that the statement was made by Ms. Craig during the 2016 campaign. The NRCC published the specific quote in this blog post . The key lines state "Jeff Erdmann thinks he knows why Craig lost. He was a volunteer for her in 2016, phone banking and going door to door. That spring, a voter asked him a question about Craig's position on an issue that he couldn't answer, so when Craig held a Q&A with the volunteers, he asked her if it was OK to direct voters to the website for an answer. 'No, not really,' Erdmann recalled her saying, 'because we haven't developed our website yet because we don't want the Republicans to know where we stand, and we haven't seen end-of-summer polling yet.'"
That isn't all, though, that Erdmann heard. Check this out:
Later, he said, he was phone banking and asked a supervisor what message he should tailor to the rural part of the district, since the script seemed aimed at city dwellers. "Just tell them the trailer-court story, they're not big thinkers out there ," he said he was told, referring to Craig's childhood in a trailer home.
It's pretty apparent that the Craig campaign doesn't have much respect for their voters, especially their rural voters. Equally apparent is that Ms. Craig's opinions aren't informed by her would-be constituents but by polling. Here's the photoshopped photo of Craig with her inopportune (but revealing) statements:
The line at the bottom of the page is the most important line:
Remember the last time Jason Lewis had to wait to determine his opinion? No, me either.
In the time of Trump, people want politicians that speak clearly and who provide solutions to important issues. Jason Lewis fits that description perfectly. After he's re-elected, his authority will grow, which will benefit his constituents and the nation.
After she's defeated, Angie Craig will return to her cushy office.
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2018 2:15 PM
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Three cheers for the Ninth Circus
Written by Rambling Rose
Even on the Left Coast of the USA, justice wins occasionally. On Tuesday, July 24, 2018, Addison Barnes prevailed in his lawsuit against Liberty High School, where his liberty or expression was not tolerated in January because he wore a T-shirt that supported the construction of the wall along the southern border of this country and also included a quote from President Donald J. Trump.
The topic in class that morning was immigration. So much for tolerance when he was forced to cover his shirt, which he did for a short time, and then removed the jacket to exercise his First Amendment Right of freedom of expression. He was then escorted from the school grounds and suspended, even though the year before he had attended a class where a pro-sanctuary city poster hung all year long.
This valiant young man was awarded $25,000.00 and an apology from the school. Actually, the apology is lame - it expresses regret but does not admit culpability for nullifying his rights when he, and probably others, have been offended by the liberal stance of the school.
For the full story, please read this article posted on May 28, 2018.
Editor's note: This is beyond insulting:
"I had a teacher who had a pro-sanctuary city poster in her room which was up all year," Barnes told NBC News-affiliate KGW. "Yet as I wear a pro-border wall shirt I get silenced and suspended for wearing that."
The term double standard isn't strong enough for this situation. The school should apologize to the community for holding such obvious double standards. I've read the First Amendment many times. I've never recalled it suggesting that it protects liberal speech but not conservative speech.
[Video no longer available]
It's ironic that Addison was suspended from Liberty HS .
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2018 2:45 PM
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Gov. Pawlenty criticizes Tim Walz on tax increases
Saying that Gov. Pawlenty beat Tim Walz like a bongo drum over taxes is understatement. Walz has said that he'll raise taxes , starting with raising the gas tax, then moving onto raising other taxes to fund "other priorities."
The article opens by saying "Rep. Tim Walz says he'd push to raise the state's gasoline tax if elected governor to pay for infrastructure improvements." After that, the article says "Walz says he couldn't rule out other tax increases to pay for priorities like broadband internet grants and local government aid increases. He says policymakers should start by addressing needs and then discuss how to pay."
What that means is that Tim Walz supports tax increases for everyone . Gov. Pawlenty didn't wait long to respond. He didn't mince words, either. Here's what Gov. Pawlenty said:
Here's what Gov. Pawlenty said:
Here they go again - Democrats teeing up massive tax increases on hardworking Minnesotans. It's telling when they say that a big tax hike is only a 'starting point.' Tim Walz and the Democrats want as much money as they can take from your pocket.
With the DFL, Minnesotans get Bernie Sanders' failed economics, Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism and Mark Dayton's incompetence. Trust me when I say that isn't the trifecta you'd be proud of hitting.
There's a word for that type of trifecta. That word is failure.
Posted Friday, July 27, 2018 12:19 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 27-Jul-18 08:01 PM
Why didn't Walz just come out and say that government knows how to best spend our hard earned money?
Comment 2 by Rex Newman at 28-Jul-18 08:01 PM
How can there be all these unmet needs after 8 years of Mark Dayton's massive spending increases?
Response 2.1 by Gary Gross at 28-Jul-18 08:08 PM
Let's remember when Tim Pawlenty was our goalie when the DFL had supermajorities in the House & Senate. The DFL wanted to go a spending spree then. His famous line was something like "Put your fork down. Step away from the table." In 2007, the DFL wanted to pass a law that would've automatically factored in inflation into the budget. I know King remembers because when he ran, his first bill included a provision for zero-based budgeting. Unfortunately, that got stripped from the bill.
Finally, when hasn't the DFL had a massive spending appetite?
The Democrats' open borders crisis
The Democrats have a major problem brewing that really can't be fixed. Thanks to their divisions, Democrats are fighting over immigration. A significant percentage of Democrats openly want open borders. Another significant percentage are fine with open borders but don't want to talk about it during the campaign. There's a tiny fraction of Democrats that are actually sane who want the borders enforced. Doug Schoen is a patriotic member of that tiny fraction. In this op-ed , Schoen makes the argument that advocating for open borders will eliminate opportunities for Democrats.
Specifically, he wrote "Not only is Ellison's statement in itself completely detached from reality, but it seems to suggest that if we cannot have wide open borders, then we must not have free trade at all. These remarks come just weeks after Ellison wore a T-shirt which read 'yo no creo en fronteras,' which in English translates into 'I do not believe in borders.'"
What's stunning about that t-shirt is that it gives context to his run for Minnesota's state Attorney General's office. It's clear that Ellison will fight law enforcement (through the courts) whose responsibility it is to protect us from drug cartels, gangs like MS-13 and sex and human traffickers. It's apparent that his only is to pad DFL voter lists. If he has to ignore the law, he's shown that he's willing to do that without hesitation.
Further, Ellison has a history of defending cop-killers in the court of public opinion. He did that with convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimard, and with Kathleen Soliah. But I digress.
Concerningly, Ellison's brash statement on immigration is not far out of line with the Democratic Party as a whole. In fact, a Harvard Harris poll from June states that a striking 36 percent of Democrats support 'basically open borders - an inflammatory policy dangerously out of line with mainstream thinking.
Then there's this:
With the midterms slowly approaching, regaining the support of Independents and moderate Republicans will be key for Democrats in their fight to take back the House. However, light of contentious issues such as immigration where the party has moved further left than ever before, this will be an increasingly difficult demographic for Democrats to appeal to in November. According to a July Gallup poll, immigration is one of the most important issues for Americans heading into the midterm elections, with 22 percent of respondents saying it was the nation's most important problem.
The Democrats lead in the generic ballot polling but I don't think it's a sturdy lead. That's because I think the Republicans' closing arguments will devastate Democrats this fall.
Part of the Republicans' closing arguments should be this insane blathering from Nancy Pelosi:
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Saying that Democrats are better at border security is stupid beyond belief. Republicans should also use this interview of Thomas Homan, the retired acting director of ICE, by Harris Faulkner:
When Homan said that the judge ordered the government to stop doing DNA testing because the ACLU filed a lawsuit on the issue, my heart broke. Homan said that "5%-7% of the kids" weren't a match with the people who claimed to be their parents. Homan then hinted that this judge might've just given these kids to sex traffickers.
If Nancy Pelosi wants to have that fight, Republicans should welcome that fight. Thoughtful people don't release kids to sex traffickers.
Posted Friday, July 27, 2018 5:26 PM
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The origins of the Trump economy
Last night, Juan Williams was on Fox News @ Night to talk about Friday's GDP report. Something he hinted at, which isn't a first, is that the Trump GDP numbers are a continuation of the Obama recovery. Let's be clear about things. First, it's indisputable that the recovery from the Great Recession started early in the Obama administration. People arguing otherwise just aren't telling the truth. Second, anyone that thinks that the Trump economy's growth is based on a continuation of Obama-era policies simply isn't informed.
From Day One, President Trump and the GOP Congress have done their best to sweep aside the Obama administration's policies. That's why people elected President Trump. They wanted a Disruptor-in-Chief. They didn't want a Stay-the-Course administration.
One of the first thing the Trump administration was to unleash the energy sector, starting with green-lighting the Keystone XL Pipeline and increasing fracking for oil and natural gas. They stopped in its tracks the war on coal, thanks in large part to the rolling back of regulations put in place late in the Obama administration through the unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act. Time and again, that was used to rid ourselves of the anti-mining regulations that the Obama administration put in place.
Those things alone would've helped the economy soar. But that's only part of the story. The highest profile legislative victory of the Trump administration is the passage of the Trump/GOP tax cuts. Those tax cuts are working and everyone knows it. Are they enough to push growth into the stratosphere? I'll say it this way: they're opening up new opportunities for entrepreneurship. President Trump has unleashed the animal spirits of this economy. That term was first used by John Maynard Keynes. Here's what he said about animal spirits:
Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits - a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.
In other words, good things happen when people are optimistic. There's no greater salesman of economic optimism than Larry Kudlow. Sandra Smith's interview of Mr. Kudlow has me believing that robust long-term economic growth isn't just possible. It's likely. Watch this interview:
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The only other guy who rivals Mr. Kudlow in terms of economic optimism is his old partner in crime in the Reagan administration, Art Laffer. One thing that I don't want to overlook in the interview is what Kudlow said about the fundamentals in place. Regulations are reasonable. Taxes, which leads to capital formation, which leads to job creation, are low. The energy sector has been unleashed. Consumer confidence is high. Capital that spent its time on the sidelines during the Obama administration is rushing back into the United States in the hopes of increased return on investment. During periods in the Obama administration, investors were sometimes happy with a return of its investment.
Early in the interview, Mr. Kudlow summed things up beautifully by saying "My hunch is that it's going to go on for quite awhile." This of things contributing to this strong economy that Mr. listed was fairly lengthy. Anyone mistaking the Trump economy with the Obama economy isn't paying attention. The differences are night and day differences.
Posted Saturday, July 28, 2018 1:54 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 28-Jul-18 07:04 AM
There was no recovery during Obamas reign, only quantitative easing which boosted the stock market and millions of people going on long term unemployment, then to disability and then off the work rolls all together. Obama and his know nothing group of community organizers did whatever they could to stifle the economy with laws and regulations to bring the US down to a level playing field with the rest of the third world.
With Trump, businesses know they have someone who supports and understand them unlike the previous 8 years.
Comment 2 by J. Ewing at 28-Jul-18 08:14 AM
I think it incorrect to say that Trump just continued Obama's "recovery." By all measures, it was the slowest recovery since the Depression. Trump rapidly accelerated the "recovery." It may be more correct, as you have, to say he reversed Obama policies that were holding the economy down.
Dershowitz's powerful what if
In this op-ed , Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz poses a pretty potent what if that liberals should think twice about.
First, he wrote "the New York Times has reported that, according to three sources, special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to stitch together an obstruction of justice case against President Trump based on his public tweets, TV appearances, conversations with public officials and other entirely lawful acts." Next, he wrote "Just imagine a prosecutor going through all of your tweets, all of your conversations, all of your actions and all of your emails in search of a plausible theory of criminality based on an accordion-like statute such as obstruction of justice. If Mueller manages to cobble together an obstruction of justice case from innocent communications, then this dangerous precedent will lie around like a loaded gun ready to be used by any vindictive prosecutors against any plausible target. That target could be you or someone you love. It could be a Democrat or a Republican. It could be a liberal or a conservative."
People keep saying that "we don't know what Mueller has." Technically, that's true. It's also misleading. The truth is that Mueller would already be writing the report if he had something damning against President Trump. He wouldn't be expanding the fishing expedition into President Trump's public comments and tweets if he had the goods.
Dershowitz has been consistent talking about civil rights:
[Video no longer available]
Defenders of Mueller will surely argue that it is common for prosecutors to stitch together innocent conduct to manufacture a crime, especially when the target is a suspected drug dealer, a terrorist or gangster. Tragically they are right. There are such cases, but there shouldn't be. Many wrongs do not make a right.
Moreover, in those cases, the underlying conduct is generally done in secret. Here, Mueller apparently is trying to turn public, open communications - core First Amendment expression - into a crime.
The time has come - indeed, it is long overdue - for all Americans to take a hard look at broad, ambiguous and open-ended statutes, which empower prosecutors to be 'creative.' There is a concept in criminal law known as lenity: If there are numerous ways of interpreting a statute, the law requires that it be interpreted in the most reasonably narrow way, so as to avoid empowering prosecutors to target unpopular defendants. Failing to apply this concept to constitutionally protected tweets, messages, emails, etc., should concern every civil libertarian, even those who are anxious to find legal weapons with which to target President Trump.
JFK once famously said that if the laws don't protect everybody, they don't protect anybody. We should never forget that statement because truer words were never spoken.
Posted Saturday, July 28, 2018 12:06 PM
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Gov. Dayton, Tim Walz & Wrong Way Feldman
After reading this article about the great GDP growth published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Center for the American Experiment's article about that report, it's pretty clear that Gov. Dayton and Tim Walz have something in common -- with Wrong Way Feldman. First, for those who don't know who Wrong Way Feldman is, he's a character from an episode of Gilligan's Island who had a penchant for flying the wrong way. On one trip, he was supposed to fly from the Bronx to Minneapolis, only to wind up in New Orleans.
It's pretty clear that Wrong Way was to pilots what Gov. Dayton is to Minnesota economics. Andrew Scattergood's article states "A large factor in our strong economy is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut taxes and simplified the tax system. Low taxes, especially low income taxes, stimulate the economy by attracting investment and increasing incentives to work and produce. While Minnesota will benefit from the national tax bill, the economic gains could have been even bigger. In the previous legislative session, legislators passed a bill that would have lowered taxes for 82 percent of filers including most low and middle-income families."
Meanwhile, Gov. Dayton wasn't bright enough to figure out that cutting taxes increases economic growth and job creation:
Unfortunately, this bill was vetoed by Governor Dayton, forcing Minnesotans to pay higher taxes in an outdated system for at least one more year. He claimed the bill was a cake to the rich and big corporations, but as we mentioned previously, corporations would have been expected to pay more taxes than previous years under the new law.
After witnessing the impact the national bill has had on working families, maybe Dayton will regret not signing a similar bill into law. No matter what he thinks, it will not be his decision next year as the election in November will decide who replaces Dayton in the governor's mansion. Hopefully tax reform is a top campaign issue and next year's legislature can make a deal that works for everyone.
Gov. Dayton vetoed the Republicans' tax conformity and tax reform bill because, in Gov. Dayton's words, it didn't punish corporations enough.
If you want to not compete with other states, set marginal tax rates too high. That'll scare off tons of companies from moving here while telling existing companies not to expand here. This week, Tim Walz followed right in Gov. Dayton's footsteps when he said he'd likely propose a bunch of tax increases, starting with a gas tax increase but then "being open" to other tax increases "to fund other priorities." In other words, he doesn't want to get too specific about which taxes he'll raise if elected.
I'll b blunt. When it comes to managing the economy, the DFL gubernatorial candidates are the political equivalent of Wrong Way Feldman:
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Editor's note: Watch the video to the end for maximum viewing pleasure.
Posted Saturday, July 28, 2018 4:00 PM
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